Vice presidential hopeful JD Vance recently took the stage at an event organized by the most influential far-right pastor you’ve never heard of. His name is Lance Wallnau and he popularized a doctrine that calls for Christians to conquer every sphere of society from the government to professional sports. 

Wallnau is a self-proclaimed Christian Nationalist who preaches that leftists aren’t even people, just vessels for demons. He accused Vice President Kamala Harris of witchcraft. He prayed for God to kill Trump’s enemies. Wallnau’s message is a mishmash of Bible memes and conspiracy theories. He preaches the Big Lie as gospel truth, fusing Christian nationalism and election denialism. 

---

The three pillars of the maga platform are the Deep State, the Big Lie and the Great Replacement, and Vance eagerly expounds on all three. 

---

In 2020, Wallnau gathered the faithful for the insurrection of January 6th. Today, he’s responsible for a good chunk of the Trump campaign’s Get Out the Vote effort. He rails against George Soros, the globalists, the World Economic Forum and vaccines. He hypes quack stem-cell therapies and Donald Trump figurines as fervently as he hypes Jesus.

Most importantly, Wallnau preaches that Donald Trump is a modern-day King Cyrus, a heathen anointed by God. The upshot is that no matter how immoral, blasphemous or criminal Trump is, it doesn’t matter because he’s God’s instrument to impose Christian dominion. If you’ve ever wondered why evangelicals don’t care that Trump is a philandering felon, Wallnau’s King Cyrus meme explains a lot. 

JD Vance is not an evangelical, but he seemed at home at the Courage Campaign. At least, he seemed as comfortable as he gets in the presence of actual voters. And why not? Vance is the interface between the C-suites and the fever swamps of Magaland. It’s why he spends so much time on weird podcasts. As a Yale-educated US senator, he legitimates the fringe. As a rightwing podcast bro, he shores up the Trump ticket’s bona fides with the supplement-slurping conspiracist base. 

One of Vance’s key functions is to validate all the factions of the maga conspiracist coalition. 

Conspiracism is the overarching ideology of the maga movement. The three pillars of the maga platform are the Deep State, the Big Lie and the Great Replacement, and Vance eagerly expounds on all three. 

Moreover, Vance moves effortlessly among integralist Catholics, protestant New Apostolic Reformation types, and the more secular Silicon Valley contingent exemplified by Elon Musk. 

CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE FOR JUST $6 A MONTH!

---

Click here to leave a tip. 10? Thanks!

---

Vance’s other role is to reassure the more staid elements of the conservative coalition that unchecked conspiracism is politically useful. In 2021, Vance exhorted the future leaders of the conservative movement to make common cause with Alex Jones, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and other raving conspiracy theorists. According to Vance, the conservative movement is doomed unless it makes common cause with lunatics. 

“Believing crazy things is not the mark of whether somebody should be rejected. Believing important truths should be the mark of whether we accept somebody, and if they believe some crazy things on the side, that’s fine,” Vance said. “Doesn’t mean you have to defend their craziest views. But by all means, if this movement is going to survive, we need to speak for truth.”

The truth, according to Vance, is that an international cabal of financier sex perverts is ruining our society. This is the closest thing Vance has to an ideology. Like Wallnau, Vance is willing to use flawed instruments. As long as someone’s willing to affirm the core conspiracy premise, Vance is flexible about whether it’s dressed up in religious lingo, or whether his brother- or sister-in-paranoia also believes in Jewish space lasers or a federal plot to turn the frogs gay.